Damon Runyon

Damon Runyon
Born	October 4, 1880(1880-10-04) Manhattan, Kansas
Died	December 10, 1946(1946-12-10) (aged 66) New York City
Occupation	Writer
Nationality	American

Alfred Damon Runyon (October 4, 1880^[1] – December 10, 1946) was a newspaperman and writer.^[2]

He was best known for his short stories celebrating the world of Broadway in New York City that grew out of the Prohibition era. To New Yorkers of his generation, a "Damon Runyon character" evoked a distinctive social type from the Brooklyn or Midtown demi-monde. The adjective "Runyonesque" refers to this type of character as well as to the type of situations and dialog that Runyon depicted. He spun humorous tales of gamblers, hustlers, actors, and gangsters, few of whom go by "square" names, preferring instead colorful monikers such as "Nathan Detroit," "Benny Southstreet," "Big Jule," "Harry the Horse," "Good Time Charley," "Dave the Dude," or "The Seldom Seen Kid." Runyon wrote these stories in a distinctive vernacular style: a mixture of formal speech and colorful slang, almost always in present tense, and always devoid of contractions. A passage from "Tobias the Terrible", collected in More than Somewhat (1937) illustrates Runyon's memorable prose:

If I have all the tears that are shed on Broadway by guys in love, I will have enough salt water to start an opposition ocean to the Atlantic and Pacific, with enough left over to run the Great Salt Lake out of business. But I wish to say I never shed any of these tears personally, because I am never in love, and furthermore, barring a bad break, I never expect to be in love, for the way I look at it love is strictly the old phedinkus, and I tell the little guy as much.

The musical Guys and Dolls was based on two Runyon stories, "The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown" and "Blood Pressure".^[3] The musical also takes characters and story elements from a few other Runyon stories, most notably "Pick The Winner." The film Little Miss Marker (and its remake, Sorrowful Jones) grew from his short story of the same name. The original series Star Trek episode 49 "A Piece Of The Action" is also Runyonese influenced, both in costume and dialog.

Runyon was also a newspaperman. He wrote the lead article for UP on Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Presidential inauguration in 1933.

Biography

Damon Runyon was born as Alfred Damon Runyan to a family of newspapermen in Manhattan, Kansas. His grandfather was a newspaper printer from New Jersey who had relocated to Manhattan, Kansas in 1855, and his father was editor of his own newspaper in the town. In 1882 Runyon's father was forced to sell his newspaper, and the family moved westward. The family eventually settled in Pueblo, Colorado, in 1887, where Runyon spent the rest of his youth. He began to work in the newspaper trade under his father in Pueblo. In present-day Pueblo, Runyon Field, the Damon Runyon Repertory Theater Company and Runyon Lake are now named in his honor. He worked for various newspapers in the Rocky Mountain area; at one of those, the spelling of his last name was changed from "Runyan" to "Runyon," a change he let stand.

In 1898 Runyon enlisted in the U.S. Army to fight in the Spanish-American War. While in the service, he was assigned to write for the Manila Freedom and Soldier's Letter.

New York years

After a notable failure in trying to organize a Colorado minor baseball league, Runyon moved to New York City in 1910. In his first New York byline, the American editor dropped the "Alfred," and the name "Damon Runyon" appeared for the first time. For the next ten years he covered the New York Giants and professional boxing for the New York American.

He was the Hearst newspapers' baseball columnist for many years, beginning in 1911, and his knack for spotting the eccentric and the unusual, on the field or in the stands, is credited with revolutionizing the way baseball was covered. Perhaps as confirmation, Runyon was inducted into the writers' wing (the J. G. Taylor Spink Award) of the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1967. He is also a member of the International Boxing Hall Of Fame and is known for dubbing heavyweight champion James J. Braddock, the "Cinderella Man". Runyon frequently contributed sports poems to the American on boxing and baseball themes, and also wrote numerous short stories and essays.

One year, while covering spring training in Texas, he met Pancho Villa in a bar in Texas and later accompanied the unsuccessful American expedition into Mexico searching for Villa. It was while he was in Mexico that he met the young girl that he eventually married.

Gambling, particularly on craps or horse races, was a common theme of Runyon's works, and he was a notorious gambler himself. One of his paraphrases from a well-known line in Ecclesiastes ran: "The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that's how the smart money bets."

A heavy drinker as a young man, he seems to have quit the bottle soon after arriving in New York, after his drinking nearly cost him the courtship of the woman who became his first wife, Ellen Egan. He remained a heavy smoker.

His best friend was mobster accountant Otto Berman, and he incorporated Berman into several of his stories under the alias "Regret, the horse player." When Berman was killed in a hit on Berman's boss, Dutch Schultz, Runyon quickly assumed the role of damage control for his deceased friend, correcting erroneous press releases (including one that stated Berman was one of Schultz's gunmen, to which Runyon replied, "Otto would have been as effective a bodyguard as a two-year-old.")

The family plot of Damon Runyon in Woodlawn Cemetery

Runyon's marriage to Ellen Egan produced two children (Mary and Damon, Jr.), and broke up in 1928 over rumors that Runyon had become infatuated with a Mexican girl he had first met while covering the Pancho Villa raids in 1916 and discovered once again in New York, when she called the American seeking him out. Runyon had promised her in Mexico that, if she would complete the education he paid for her, he would find her a dancing job in New York. Her name was Patrice Amati del Grande, and she became his companion after he separated from his wife. After Ellen Runyon died of the effects of her own drinking problems, Runyon and Patrice married; that marriage ended in 1946 when Patrice left Runyon for a younger man.

Death and Memorial Research Center

Runyon died in New York City from throat cancer in late 1946, at age 66. His body was cremated, and his ashes were scattered from an airplane over Broadway in Manhattan by Captain Eddie Rickenbacker on December 18, 1946. The family plot of Damon Runyon is located at Woodlawn Cemetery in Bronx, NY. After Runyon's death, his friend and fellow journalist, Walter Winchell, went on his radio program and appealed for contributions to help fight cancer, eventually establishing the “Damon Runyon Cancer Memorial Fund” to support scientific research into causes of, and prevention of cancer.

Media

Bibliography

Films

Numerous Damon Runyon stories were adapted for the stage and the screen. Some of the best of these include:

• Lady for a Day (1933)—Adapted by Robert Riskin, who suggested the name change from Runyon's title "Madame La Gimp," the film garnered Academy Award nominations for Best Picture, Best Director (Frank Capra), Best Actress (May Robson), and Best Adaptation for the Screen (Riskin). It was remade as Pocketful of Miracles in 1961, with Bette Davis in the Apple Annie role; Frank Sinatra recorded the upbeat title song (his rendition is not used in the film). The film received Oscar nominations for composers Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen and for co-star Peter Falk (Best Supporting Actor). In 1989, Jackie Chan adapted the story yet again for the Hong Kong action film Miracles, adding several of his trademark stunt sequences.
• Little Miss Marker (1934)—The film that made Shirley Temple a star, launched her career as perhaps America's most beloved child film star, and pushed her past Greta Garbo as the nation's biggest film draw of the year. Subsequent remakes include Sorrowful Jones (1949; Bob Hope, Lucille Ball), 40 Pounds of Trouble (1962; Tony Curtis), and Little Miss Marker (1980; Walter Matthau, Julie Andrews, Bob Newhart, Tony Curtis).
• The Lemon Drop Kid (1934, Lee Tracy) — remade in 1951 with Bob Hope (and I Love Lucy co-star William Frawley as a racetrack tout), it introduced the Christmas song "Silver Bells".
• Princess O'Hara (1935; Jean Parker) — remade in 1943 as It Ain't Hay with Abbott and Costello and Patsy O'Connor
• Professional Soldier (1935) — an adventure story starring Victor McLaglen and Freddie Bartholomew
• A Slight Case of Murder (1938) with Edward G. Robinson — remade in 1953 as Stop, You're Killing Me with Broderick Crawford and Claire Trevor
• The Big Street (1942) — Henry Fonda, Lucille Ball (adapted from Runyon's story "Little Pinks")
• Butch Minds the Baby (1942) — Broderick Crawford, Shemp Howard
• Money from Home (1953) —Martin and Lewis
• Guys and Dolls (1955) —Marlon Brando, Jean Simmons, Frank Sinatra

Radio

Broadcast from January to December 1949, with reruns well into the early 1950s, The Damon Runyon Theatre dramatized 52 of Runyon's short stories for radio. Produced by Mayfair Productions for syndication to local radio stations, John Brown played "Broadway," who served as host and narrator.

Episodes can be heard at Archive.org's Old Time Radio Database here.

Television

Damon Runyon Theatre aired on CBS-TV from 1955-56.

Literary style

Runyon almost totally avoids the past tense (it is thought to be used once, in the short story "The Lily of St Pierre", and once in "The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown" ^[4]), and makes little use of the future tense, using the present for both. He also avoided the conditional, using instead the future indicative in situations that would normally require conditional. An example: "Now most any doll on Broadway will be very glad indeed to have Handsome Jack Madigan give her a tumble ..." (Guys and Dolls, "Social error"). There is an homage to Runyon that makes use of this peculiarity ("Chronic Offender" by Spider Robinson) which involves a time machine.

He uses many slang terms (which go unexplained in his stories), such as:

• pineapple = pineapple grenade
• roscoe/john roscoe/the old equalizer/that thing = gun
• shiv = knife
• noggin = head
• snoot = nose

There are many recurring composite phrases such as:

• ever-loving wife (occasionally "ever-loving doll")
• more than somewhat (or "no little, and quite some"); this phrase was so typical that is was used as the title of one of his short story collections
• loathe and despise
• one and all

Runyon's stories also employ occasional rhyming slang, similar to the cockney variety but native to New York (e.g.: "Miss Missouri Martin makes the following crack one night to her: 'Well, I do not see any Simple Simon on your lean and linger.' This is Miss Missouri Martin's way of saying she sees no diamond on Miss Billy Perry’s finger." (from "Romance in the Roaring Forties").

The comic effect of his style results partly from the juxtaposition of broad slang with mock-pomposity. Women, when not "dolls", "Judies", "pancakes", "tomatoes", "broads" or what have you, may be "characters of a female nature", for example. He typically avoided contractions like "don't" in the example above, which also contributes significantly to the humorously pompous effect. In one sequence, a gangster tells another character to do as he's told, or else "find another world in which to live."

Runyon's short stories are told in the first person by a protagonist who is never named, and whose role is unclear; he knows many gangsters and does not appear to have a job, but he does not admit to any criminal involvement, and seems to be largely a bystander.

Legacy

• The Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation, established in his honor, was set up to fund promising scientists in the field of cancer research. The organization sponsors a 5K run at Yankee Stadium.
• Every year, the Denver Press Club hands out the Damon Runyon Award to a notable journalist. Past winners include Jimmy Breslin, Mike Royko, George Will and Bob Costas.^[5]
• Damon Runyon Elementary school in Littleton, Colorado is named after him.
• History's first telethon was hosted by Milton Berle in 1949 to raise funds for the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation.
• The house in Manhattan, Kansas where Runyon was born is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
• Named in his honor, the Damon Runyon Stakes is a Thoroughbred horse race run every December at Aqueduct Race Track. Runyon loved horse racing and ran a small stable of his own.
• In the mid-1930s, Runyon persuaded promoter Leo Seltzer to formally change his Roller Derby spectacle from a marathon roller skating race into a full-contact team sport,^[6] an innovation which was eventually revived in a DIY spirit seven decades later.
• One block of West 45th Street (between 8th and 9th Avenues) in Manhattan's Hell's Kitchen is named Runyon's Way.
• In 2008, The Library of America selected Runyon’s story “The Eternal Blonde” for inclusion in its two-century retrospective of American Crime Writing.
• Runyon and his cat Sheba appear as characters in Diane Duane's novel The Big Meow, completed in 2011.

Gallery

• 

  Runyon's World War I draft card

Biography portal

References

Further reading

• Mosedale, John (1981). The Men Who Invented Broadway: Damon Runyon, Walter Winchell & Their World. New York: Richard Marek Publishers

External links

• Damon Runyon at the Internet Movie Database Retrieved on 2009-5-16
• Damon Runyon at the Internet Broadway Database Retrieved on 2009-5-16
• National Baseball Hall of Fame - 1967 J. G. Taylor Spink Award Winner
• Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation and Broadway Theater Service
• Text of Story "The Informal Execution of Soupbone Pew" at http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0606431.txt
• Damon Runyon in 2011